65th IFLA Council and General Conference
Bangkok, Thailand, August 20 - August 28, 1999
Preserving and stimulating oral tradition using the Internet
Steve Cisler
Board Member, Association for Community Networking
Paper presented at an International Conference on "Collection and Safeguarding the Oral Tradition", a Satellite Meeting of The 65th IFLA Council and General Conference August 16-19, 1999, Khon Kaen. Local organization provided by Mahasarakham University, Maha Sarakham, Thailand.
Paper:
In the beginning was the word, or was it? I do not
want to read a paper to you, and I do not
want to make this just a presentation. I would like
it to be a story or a collection of tales about what
other people are doing to use new technologies for
the preservation and stimulation of oral tradition.
So, if we had a fire in the center of our meeting
place, I'd ask you to gather round. Imagine a dark
cool evening. Imagine that the fire has already been
used for cooking our meal, and now the flames have
died down. If you sit close enough, you can see my
face and the gestures I make with my hands, and I can
see your faces. What happens next depends on my skill
as a storyteller, or as a puppetmaster, or as a poet
or griot. And it also depends upon you. Your
responses fuel the enthusiasm of the storyteller.
However, this setting is still a scholarly
conference, taking place in a university with high
technology support mechanisms and electric lights and
the Internet. But let's pretend...
One of the central figures in theories about orality
is a scholar named Walter Ong. author of
Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the
Word. In this work he describes the
differences between primary oral cultures--ones that
do not have a system of writing--and chirographic
cultures which are dominated by writing and print.
These are the cultures that support professions like
librarianship and editors and web designers. Ong says
these chirographic cultures began about 6000 years
ago and are co-existing not only with oral ones but
some are cultures where so-called second orality is
emerging. These new environments are influenced by
radio, television, and other electronic media, and
they combine elements of oral and chirographic
culture. Though he did not write about the Internet,
it seems to me that it is spawning a new orality in
ways that radio and television have not. This is the
subject of my talk.
My introduction to oral tradition was during a course
in African folklore. There I learned that knowledge
of all sorts has been transmitted by word of mouth,
that it was more than moral fables and tales for
young people. The knowledge flow included religious
beliefs, customs, aphorisms, laws, humor, and
accurate histories of the people. I remember a Ph.D.
thesis written in 1964 that showed how closely the
oral histories transmitted by a tribe in Mozambique
over 4 centuries matched the writings of 16th century
Portuguese explorers. However, the Africans' memory
is better than mine because I cannot give you a
correct citation for the thesis.
In Theravada Buddhism--which is practiced in Sri
Lanka, Burma, Thailand--it is believed that the
earliest scriptures were preserved in the Pali
language. At the time of the Buddha's death, these
84,000 units of teaching were not written down. About
3 months after his death, a council of 500 disciples
was convened in what is now the Indian state of
Bihar. The purpose was to ensure that all the
teachings would be complete and authoritative. One
elder was the questioner, and two others provided
answers. The rest listened and gave feedback. The
context for the teachings was also orally
transmitted, and when everyone present was satisfied,
all recited them to show their acceptance. There were
other councils to refute certain teachings, and in
the first century B.C. they were finally written--
transcribed to palm leaves, made from the lontar
palm. which not only provides material to store
information, knowledge, and images but also yields a
very tasty drink and material for building houses.
In Burma, this tradition of recitation and
reinforcement and correction by peers continues to
this day. So we can say that, even without written
records on palm leaves, parchment, paper, CD-ROMs, or
computer network servers, some knowledge can be
accurately transmitted over hundreds of years.
Earlier this year I visited a famous library in the
coastal town of Sirinaja, Bali, Indonesia. The Gedong
Kirtya houses 2000 lontar books, many of which are
originally Hindhu epics and knowledge that was
originally orally transmitted. A young man employed
at the library had just finished making a copy of a
complicated work. The process took five months. At
one time this was a new media, and now it is almost
unknown. Few people in the Bali can read these works
any more. Are there parallels to obsolete technology
that no longer works and thus hides the recorded
knowledge on decaying media?
The New Tools
When I say "new technologies" I mean computers and
networks. Some use the shorthand ICT:
information and communications technologies.
Others just say the Internet and when they say that,
it's not just the network of networks now connecting
more than 200 countries but also the people using the
Internet, the hardware--computers, laptops, routers,
Palm pilots, servers, Internet telephones, the
applications and other software, and the content
being archived and moved around the networks.
Together this forms a kind of Internet culture, but
it is not monolithic. It takes many shapes, and what
may be common in Silicon Valley or Paris or Bangkok,
may be too expensive, illegal, or impractical in
Bali, Bogota, or Tunis.
Much of my time is spent working on public access
projects for Internet access in the United States and
in other countries. I am well aware of the problems
of connectivity and the disparity in options for
countries with few resources to maintain electronic
mail access, not to mention the more bandwidth hungry
applications like audio and video. Still, I want to
tell you about a wide range of these projects to
offer some options for libraries in the present and
for the future.
I think it is critical that libraries be aware of
these developments, even if they cannot afford to
take part. The Internet is changing the way
libraries work; it is changing our cultures, our
business models of publishing, of entertainment, of
national memory. It is exciting and it is volatile.
For many, it is moving too fast, and many worry that
valuable practices, artifacts, knowledge, and
memories will be lost or distorted. For others, it
opens new possibilities and new means of self
expression.
Marshal McLuhan viewed new technologies as extensions
of humanity, and he viewed them optimistically. Sven
Birkerts, a writer and critic, believes the new
technologies are corrosive and are harmful to
cultures and institutions. He was worried about the
printed word. This week we have discussed the spoken
word, and some are worried that is a tradition that
is being corroded by the Internet.
Corrosive: a term that is very descriptive and
usually negative. We think of something solid that is
being weakened, undermined, and destroyed: of poor
quality paper books rotting on humid shelves in our
libraries, of acid tossed on a painting as an act of
protest or of madness, and of a culture being
assaulted from without by some hostile and powerful
force. Some people see the Internet as corrosive to
local cultures, much in the same way as the
international financial network flows can undermine
local currencies. Many a scholarly paper has debated
the effects of the radio, television, and telephone
on language, local traditions, and customs. The U.S.
entertainment industry is viewed by some as having a
corrosive effect on local cultures. But what about
the Internet?
While agreeing that the Internet may affect local
language, culture, and expression, we must remember
that neither language, nor culture, nor storytelling
is static. While English is dominant now, there is
still room for other languages to flourish. While
there may be rules, traditions, and norms, they have
always changed. There may be examples that we want to
preserve, but I believe that we must also stimulate
these traditions, and the new technologies can do
that.
When I was doing grants at Apple Computer for the
Apple Library of Tomorrow program we worked with
librarians and museum curators who were both very
conservative and very innovative and forward-looking.
This was evident in projects such as The Library of
Congress American Memory, The Zuni-English multimedia
dictionary, the University of Alaska digital audio
preservation project, the Dead Sea Scrolls
digitization project, and Singing Light, the first
CD-ROM produced by a public library in Northern
California, that combined oral history transcripts
and digitized photos of Pomo Indian collections.
What encouraged me was that the success of the
project did not depend on our gifts of computers and
software, nor on the prestige of the library (some
large ones failed in impressive ways), but on the
skills of the librarians to work with the people and
materials at hand to create exciting projects that
inspired others to continue and explore.
Oral tradition on the Internet includes a variety of
areas: language preservation; oral history;
storytelling; poetry; and new media (digital radio
and webcasts). Each of these includes archives of
papers, databases, and events, and for each group
there are associations which are using the Internet
to grow and to keep members informed. Finally, there
are new collaborations that involved groups that
never would have met before the Internet became
popular. Some of these are online and some are
offline but only last as long as the duration of the
project or event. For instance, this conference used
the web to call for papers, and the organizers and
speakers used email to work out the details, submit
papers, and keep informed about the agenda. This
ability to link up, to collaborate will lessen the
isolation of people involved in oral history,
storytelling, and poetry projects around the world.
Language preservation
A language will stay alive if there are sufficient
numbers of people speaking and perhaps writing it,
and if the language serves the native speakers in
their daily lives. It may be a language of commerce
such as Hausa in West Africa, or it may be a sacred
language by which eternal truths of a culture are
transmitted between a priesthood and the lay people,
between the old and the young. It may be a local
language that describes the environment far better
than any outside language. This last assumption is at
the heart of a cross disciplinary group called
Terralingua, whose association is primarily
virtual. Their web site is at University of
California, and they meet at conferences and
workshops in different parts of the world. They post
occasional papers to the site and share news with
each other. Comprised of linguists, biologists,
anthropologists, and geographers, this group believes
that biological diversity is tied to the survival of
local languages. Language diversity equals biological
diversity and perhaps a healthier planet.
One of the most successful example of a language
preservation project is taking place in Hawaii, the
50th state in the U.S.A. Many groups in the islands
believe that the local culture is threatened by the
western consumer society, the vast waves of tourists
who come to visit and to live, and the dominance of
the English language. Some want independence, others
autonomy, others financial reparation for the U.S.
overthrow of the monarchy about a century ago. At
that time there was a mature publishing industry
throughout the islands. Hawaiian was spoken by most
of the original inhabitants, though waves of
immigrants from the Philippines, Japan, and Portugal,
as well as the mainland of the United States, usually
did not learn more than a few words of Hawaiian. When
the language was banned in schools in favor of
English, the newspapers and number of books available
to the people dwindled, and by 1985, there were less
than 25,000 people who spoke the language. In fact,
more people spoke Samoan than Hawaiian! A group of
Hawaiian graduate students concerned about the lack
of a structure for teaching Hawaiian to little
children formed a preschool where any child could be
immersed in the language. Over the years, as the
children have grown, there are now high school
graduates and courses for all levels. At the same
time as the school spread around the islands, a small
technical staff offered training, collaboration, and
communications online. Everything is in the language,
including the operating system of the computers,
Netscape, and the other applications commonly used in
schools. They have involved the local experts (elders
and academic) by convening them twice a year to
deliberate about new translations into Hawaiian
(mouse, download, browser). It is an excellent
example of how the Internet and computer technology
is used to reinforce an innovative yet traditional
program in the educational system. On standard tests
the children do better in English than the mainstream
students from the state school system, so they are
not being isolated from the dominant language of
commerce and higher education.
Oral history archives
Oral history archives are found in many institutions
and local organizations, including university
libraries. Some of these collections are being
digitized and put online. Many restrictions apply to
who is eligible to listen and when. There might be a
waiting period as long as a century, and the storage
media may not last long enough for the researcher to
benefit! The Oral History Association links up its
members through a web site and a popular mailing
list: H-Oralhist which includes academics and
scholars working in the field of oral history. The
archives online usually include a catalog of the
transcripts and some of the actual documents, usually
transcribed at a later time and then digitized and
put in a database.
The U.S. Library of Congress' American Memory project
has many collections of sounds, photographs, and
transcripts including hundreds of interviews carried
out during the economic depression in the 1930's by
the Federal Writers Project. The web site lets the
user browse by locale, informant or search by keyword
within the document. Other collections are focused on
historical movements or events: Berkeley, California
in the 1960's; women's right to vote; separation of
Australian Aboriginal children from their families,
and survivors of Kmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia.
Traditional storytellers and their community online
Storytelling in the United States is enjoying a
revival. In the 1970's it seemed that the itinerant
storyteller was supported by small honoraria from the
children's departments of public libraries. Even
today, one of the most rewarding programs at the
American Library Association is the storytelling
night. Librarians not only support storytellers; they
participate. The Appalachian region of the United
States has been known for its rich tradition of
stories passed on orally, and it is also the location
for the largest U.S. storytelling festival that takes
place during the summer each year. Storytellers who
have their own web pages have formed a ring of such
sites. The ring is a starting point that provides
links to all the member pages, and is usually
organized very informally, though members can
establish rules or guidelines. Rings also exist for
hundreds of other subjects besides storytelling.
Indigenous people have had a long tradition of
storytelling, and it continues on the Internet. It is
a blend of self-expression and a desire to assert
cultural identity in another realm besides dance,
art, religion, and traditional knowledge. I have been
working with Russ Imrie, a Mohawk Indian who runs a
web site for some of the Costanoan Indian tribe in
California. Storytelling is an important way to keep
their versions of history passed on to younger
generations. They publicize the annual storytelling
festival and include QuickTime videos of Indian
historians and storytellers. Many books do not tell
their stories from their point of view, and they view
the web as their own medium of expression to correct
history, to strengthen their own identity.
Digital storytelling and new forms of expression.
Digital storytelling is a combination of traditional
storytelling techniques, sometimes combined with live
performance techniques, and with the use of
multi-media to provide sound and video to supplement
the spoken word. In some creations, everything is
online, and the listener or computer user, explores
in a non-linear fashion the mix of narrative,
photographs, video clips, and sound archives. The act
of creating this can be a single artist working with
her computer equipment and memories, or it can be
collaborative.
Digital storytelling is becoming popular for
individuals, businesses, and non-profits who have,
simply, a story to tell. The results may be
classified as not-so-subtle advertisements to build
up loyalty to a brand, as is the case with the
Coca-Cola exhibit in Las Vegas, California or they
may be very personal stories and family histories
such as those created by Dana Atchley.
In the Digital Clubhouse in Sunnyvale, California,
the members learn to use computers, scanner, and
recording devices to tell a short story that is
important to them or their organization. The process
has been life-changing for some participants. The
acquisition and application of new skills to reach an
immediate goal has given a sense of control and power
to older people, individuals who have felt isolated,
and handicapped children. This public access center
is also working with the local public library.
A critical part of the digital storytelling process
is not putting the stories on the Web. They are too
large for most people to access, but the creators
gather at the clubhouse for afternoons and evenings
of storytelling and sharing by making use of the
facilities which include high end workstations,
projection screens, comfortable furniture, and a
helpful staff. The Internet is used to gather
information, publicize the events, and link up
Clubhouses into a growing network.
Poetry Slams
In the past few years there has been a renewed
interest in poetry. In addition to publicizing
traditional poetry (readings, publications, and the
poets themselves) in E-poets.net, another
Chicago-based phenomenon, poetry slams, have grown
from a casual contest between poets in a bar to
international competitions with teams from different
cities, vying for prizes and audience approval. A
poetry slam is scored by a few members of the
audience, and each performance, about three minutes
long, is scored between 1 and 10. The audience is
encouraged to participate by cheering and taking
part. Many of these have an open microphone time when
anyone can have a few minutes on stage--or online.
I attended a slam in San José for the teams
from that town, San Francisco, and three other
cities. All the teams were raising money to compete
in the national competition which takes place in
Chicago at the same time as this conference. Some
slams are webcast over the Internet. Marc Boothe, who
runs www.23:59.co.uk in the United Kingdom, links up
poetry slams in New York with those in London to
bring together poets of African and Caribbean origin.
Other competitions are publicized on message boards
and slam web sites around the world.
Radio Stations.
Radio Free Monterey in California allows callers to
listen, view via Real Video--if you have a good
connection, chat and send email to the people who run
the stations.
Radio Free Monterey is a virtual station; it does not
broadcast on radio frequencies, but many regular
stations that do also have a presence on the Web also
provide audio portions of their programming, as well
as supplementary information via the Internet. Every
type is represented: commercial radio stations,
government broadcasters, rebel groups, pirate
broadcasters, and community radio stations. Libraries
should be aware of AMARC, The World Association of
Community Radio Broadcasters. Just as public
libraries exist to serve the local communities, AMARC
members are frequently found in rural areas of
developing countries because the small portable radio
is the easiest and least expensive way to get
information and entertainment in an area where books,
electricity, and television may be rare or
non-existent. These community institutions are
growing, and just as librarians don't want network
enthusiasts to forget books as an important medium,
AM, FM, and Shortwave radio is still very important.
The use of radio as a democratic medium is the focus
of a forthcoming conference: Radiocracy, at Cardiff
University in the United Kingdom. For more
information see:
http://www.df.ac.uk/uwcc/jomec/.
Radio web sites includes feedback to the staff,
program schedules, and audio libraries of past
programs. Some archives have hundreds of long
programs stored for free listening, even with slow
connections. Joe Frank the artist whose spoken
performances were broadcast on public stations for
many years, is no longer on the radio, but the
archive of his programs resides in California at http://www.kcrw.org/.
A problem for the archivist as well as the listener
is what audio format to choose. Though Real Networks
is used most widely for spoken word, there are also
many other sound formats including those from
Microsoft, Apple's QuickTime, and the extremely
popular music format MP3. Real Networks has changed
its software several times since the web became
popular, and programs that are archived in a more
recent format will not play on some computers that
are not powerful enough to run the latest version.
Consequently, you have programs stored in multiple
formats which will not run on all or even the
majority of machines.
Recommendations for Librarians
I intentionally made these recommendations for
librarians and not for libraries. I do not believe
that all of our institutions encourage
experimentation and innovation, or if they do, it
takes a long time for validation and diffusion.
However, individual librarians will have to be
passionate (and knowledgeable) before any of these
projects can succeed. They, in turn, will convince,
cajole, enlist, and evangelize other staff,
foundations, partners (the poets, the elders in a
community, museum colleagues, and of course their
supervisors) or the projects will not happen. This
may involve more work, a suspicion by others that you
may not be doing your job, and in some cases you may
leave your position and start work elsewhere in order
to pursue your dream.
I have always believed that libraries need to
redefine themselves to take advantage of local and
strategic opportunities. This can be very hard if
your budget is low, if you lack political power in
your country, or if you don't have the time to finish
your traditional work as a librarian. Yet we have
spent four days together because we believe in new
roles and new possibilities. We need to carry that on
to the main conference in Bangkok, and back home.
Because the opportunities to support the oral
tradition on the Internet are so varied, so too are
the ways for small and large libraries to become
involved. A library need not be connected to the
Internet to support a local oral history effort.
Convene a meeting to discuss this. Provide a room for
interviews, a place to store the archived material.
If your town has Internet access, visit the local
Internet Service Provider and try to interest them in
providing storage space on their server for local
history audio files. Become familiar with the audio
processing software for digital archives. There are
many good programs for both Windows and Macintosh.
Read how poetry groups and slam contests were started
in other places, and organize one in your library. If
one already exists, see if they want to put on a
program with the library as co-sponsor. Invite the
Internet provider and local radio station, and with
interest and collaboration the groups may come up
with a plan to bring the spoken word online.
If the infrastructure in your area is not well
developed or too expensive to use for this purpose,
ensure that the library follows the technology and
changes in network expansion so that it will be ready
when access becomes more affordable.
In June 1999, I helped plan and run an Internet
Society network training program for librarians in
Latin America. At the end we started a mailing list
to keep up with the changes and news items from our
libraries in 10 countries. I admit that many
conference attendees like to join a mailing list
after a successful conference but do not take part
once the memory has faded. Do we want to keep telling
our stories to each other after we leave Khon Kaen?
Or must we gather again in a room, under a tree, or
around a fire to share what we have learned?
Links to site from the oral presentation:
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